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Curious Idioms From Around The World

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Many idioms in English are so familiar to native speakers that we don't stop to think about how strange they are. "Cut the mustard." "Off your rocker." "Straight from the horse's mouth." It's the same in other languages. For example, in German, to say you're not seeing what everyone else can see, you'd say "Tomaten auf den Augen haben," or literally "you have tomatoes on your eyes." In French, the phrase "se regarder en chiens de faïence" literally translates as "to look at each other like earthenware dogs"—essentially, to look at each other with distrust. The Croatian version of "what goes around comes around" is "doće maca na vratanca," or "the pussy cat will come to the tiny door," and the Polish version of "were you born yesterday?" is "z choinki się urwałaś?" or "did you fall from a Christmas tree?" Tamil, a language spoken in some of India and Sri Lanka, has several water-themed idioms, including "to pour water over someone's head," or break off a relationship, and "show water to someone," or be someone's nemesis. Hear more interesting language quirks in the videos below.